Lover Beware (11 page)

He glanced down at her shoulder holster, his expression wry. "Would you mind taking care of that yourself? I don't like guns."

That made her laugh, and laughter made her fingers less clumsy, so she was able to unfasten the buckle and lay her weapon in its holster on the bedside table. Rule came up behind her then and put his arms around her waist, pulling her to him. He'd slid off his shirt while she took care of her weapon, and she felt the heat of his skin through the linen of her shirt. The hard length of him nestled against the small of her back.

Her breath caught. He bent and grazed his teeth along the cord of her neck. A shock of pleasure vibrated through her and wrecked her breathing. He ran his hands over her body slowly, luxuriously, breasts to stomach, pubic mound, thighs— and her vision hazed.

He unfastened her shorts and pushed them down. She stepped out of them and would have turned around, but he clasped her to him, her back to his front, and carefully unbuttoned her top. Undid the catch on her bra, and removed it. And eased her panties down.

Then she turned and reached for his belt buckle. Her hands weren't steady. Neither was his breathing. The heat in his eyes made her fingers fumble, because she couldn't look away.

When he was as naked as she was, he said, "I don't think I can go slow. I want to. I want to spend hours on your body, but I can't. Not this time."

"Thank God." And she looped her arms around his neck, bringing their bodies together. They touched, skin to skin, and the world changed.

He lifted her, tumbling her onto the bed and following her down. She wrapped herself around him, trying to touch all of him at once while he tried to kiss her everywhere. His hand snaked down between her legs, where he stroked the slick folds. Her stomach went hollow. The muscles at the tops of her thighs clenched and quivered, a kinetic percussion with her heart pounding out the accompaniment.

She dug her fingers into his waist. Hurry. He slid up her body. Instinctively, her legs opened and the head of his penis teased her innerfolds ... the soft, silky, bare head of his penis.

"Wait," she gasped. "I'm on the pill, but—"

"Are you?" He had a funny look on his face, his eyebrows all awry and his mouth pressed down. His arras quivered with strain, but he bent and kissed her gently. "You can't catch anything from me, or vice versa. Bugs don't stick around in my system."

In spite of everything, indignation pricked her. "Does that mean you've never even had a cold?"

His' lips twitched. A drop of sweat drifted down the side of his face. "Afraid so. Lily ... now?"

He needed her. As any man needs a woman—in a purely human way—he needed her. Something softened and opened inside her, and she answered without words, cupping his face in her hands and lifting up gently with her hips. He pushed inside.

Full. Throbbing. Complete. Sensation pin wheeled through her, a thousand little sparks like colors spun into feeling. Her eyes squeezed closed, and the colors were there in the darkness with her.

"Ahh," he said. "Ah, Lily." And he stroked her face with his hand while he stroked her, deep inside, with his cock. "Look at me, Lily. Look at me while I'm inside you."

She opened her eyes and his were right there above her, waiting to catch her as she emerged from her private darkness. His pupils were huge. Growing. Darkness bled through his irises and beyond, pooling where white should be, a black, alien rainbow overtaking the colors she knew.

The shock of fear hit instantly, an electric tremor. But it was too late to pull back, too late to reserve any portion of herself—he was already inside her, deep inside in a way beyond the physical. Fear was only another sensation, giving claws to the need in her belly.

"Now," she panted, digging her fingers into his buttocks. "Now, Rule."

He shuddered. As if some inner chain had snapped, he dug his hands into her buttocks, lifting her, putting her where he needed so he could pound into her. She cried out. Need surged—his, hers, the two swirled together in complex patterns disturbing the lines that were supposed to divide them.

Fingers gripped, bruised. Flesh smacked into flesh as sweat dripped, running over heated bodies as the great, greedy beast of passion took them both by the throat, shook them—then flung them out into a clear, crisp darkness.

"SOMEDAY I WANT to see you in colors. Green, maybe." Lily's head was pillowed on Rule's chest. It was damp and warm, stirring slightly with his breath. The aftershocks had faded into drowsy bliss. Later, she knew, she would question, wonder, try to understand. That business with his eyes ... but not now. Not yet.

He opened his eyes. "I must have done something wrong. You have enough breath left to talk.”

Her laugh was husky and delighted. "Blue. You'd look good in blue."

He ran a hand over her hair. His voice was quiet, almost sad. "I wear colors sometimes at Clanhome. Tomorrow I'll wear blue for you."

Reality seeped back in, about as welcome as a cold trickle of rain leaking beneath a raincoat collar. And just as impossible to ignore. She propped herself up on one elbow. "You never did tell me why you had to see me so urgently, did you? It's because you're finally taking me to Clanhome. Your father is back."

"I'm taking you to Clanhome, yes. I believe my father will see you, though he hasn't said. He ..." Rule sighed. "He's been back for several days."

He'd lied to her. Though she'd warned herself all along not to believe everything he told her, learning that he had lied stripped her of something warm and important.

"I couldn't tell you." He touched her cheek. "He directly forbade me to tell you until..."

"Until what?" Hurt throbbed inside her. Honor bound Rule to obey his Lupois, whose decisions he was pledged to uphold with his own body. She knew that. And still it hurt. "Until I went to bed with you?"

"He didn't want his condition known."

"What do you mean?"

"Four days ago, on his way home from meeting with another Lupois, my father was attacked by other lupi. He was badly mauled. He nearly died."

Chapter 10

THE RAIN OF last night had vanished as if it had never been. The sky was clear and cloudless, the land around them seriously rumpled, studded with live oak, juniper, and pines. Wind blew in the open windows of Rule's Explorer, smelling of dust and living things.

Lily wondered what it smelled like to him. She would never really know what his world was like, would she?

Returning to the real world was a bitch. She'd been mostly silent ever since they left her apartment, where she'd changed into clean clothes. But the doubts and the questions—and a few uneasy answers—hadn't waited until morning to hit. They'd plagued her last night, but they hadn't kept her from making love with him a second time, or sleeping in his arms. Even now the urge to touch him rose every so often, strong and compelling. Rather like a sneeze, she thought. If she ignored it, it went away.

But it kept coming back.

He slowed and turned off the pavement onto a well-graded dirt road. "We're almost there," he said.

"Good. Your authority does extend to getting me through

the gates, I take it. Since your father doesn't know I'm coming."

"He'll see you."

"How can you be sure now, when before you wouldn't bring me to him?"

"It's complicated." He grimaced. "I lied about my father being gone because he didn't want his condition known. Everything else I told you about lupi was true. You'll need his approval to accomplish anything."

She stared at him, angry. "Everything? Are you sure?"

"Of course I... shit." He ran a hand over his hair. "I forgot. No, not quite everything."

"You admit, then, that you lied about being able to identify the clan of the lupus who killed Charlene Hall."

"How did you figure that out?"

She shrugged and looked out the window. He was wearing last night's clothes and a pair of wraparound sunglasses he'd had in the glove compartment, and he made her ache. "That's my job, figuring things out. Your father was attacked by a member of the Leidolf clan, wasn't he? You believed it was someone from the same clan, or the same group within that clan, who killed the others. So you lied to direct my attention that way."

"I didn't tell you it was Leidolf who attacked my father."

"You didn't have to." He'd told her enough. Leidolf hated the Citizenship Bill, and they'd very nearly killed its strongest proponent among the lupi—the leader of Nokolai. But what about Rule? He supported the bill, too. If his father was killed, he would be Lupois.

Fear balled up cold in her stomach. Surely he was a target, too. "Can you identify the killer at all?"

"Oh, yes. If I ever got close to him, I could. But the clan scents aren't quite as distinctive as I led you to believe. I could tell Leidolf from Shuntzu, but the various European clans have interbred too much. Not all Germans are blond, and not all Leidolf smell the same."

"But your father is sure it was Leidolf who tried to kill him."

"He recognized them," Rule said grimly.

"Them? How many—"

"You can ask him, but I doubt he'll tell you." He glanced

at her, then reached out and caught her hand. "What's wrong, Lily? You've a right to be angry that I deceived you, but I think there's something more bothering you."

His fingers clasping hers felt right. Absolutely right. Lily swallowed. What was she supposed to tell him? Sorry, but I've developed an addiction to you after just one night. I have to touch you every so often, which is likely to play hell with my job. "Things went pretty far, pretty fast with us last night. There's something I'd meant to ask you. Or tell you."

"A jealous boyfriend I don't know about?' His voice was light.

"No. That's just it. If there had been a man in my life, last night wouldn't have happened. Fidelity is very important to me. You might say it's nonnegotiable."

"I see. You don't think I can—or would want to—be faithful to you."

A little bump of hope, quickly squelched, stuck in her throat. She swallowed. "Lupi don't respect fidelity."

"Normally, that's true. We consider jealousy a sin." He drove in silence for a moment, one hand holding hers, one on the wheel, staring straight ahead. "You need to see for yourself to understand. That's one reason I'm bringing you to Clan-home. So you'll understand."

CLANHOME WAS VINEYARDS and forests, steep slopes and a long, narrow valley cradling what amounted to a village or very small town. The Nokolai held roughly seventeen thousand acres, and were jealously protective of their wilderness; only a small part of the land was used or settled.

To Lily's surprise, dogs raced the Explorer as they drove down the single main street. Modest stucco, timber-frame, or adobe houses lined the dusty street and peered out from the pines and oaks covering the slope to her left. Lily saw a gas station, a small open market, a cafe, a laundry, and a general store.

And children. Laughing, playing, arguing, they raced around in swirls and eddies like flocks of birds. The youngest ones, boys and girls both, wore shorts and nothing more.

So did most of the adults she saw—the men, at least. The two women standing talking in one neatly fenced yard had added skimpy halters. A teenage girl sitting in front of the store drinking a Coke wore a loose, gauzy dress. A huge, silver-coated wolf sat beside her, panting cheerfully in the heat.

The Lupois's home was set slightly apart, perched partway up the slope at the end of the street. It was larger than the others, but by no means a mansion—a sprawling stucco home with a red tile roof and a terraced yard brimming with flowers.

Rule's son came running out when they drove up.

Lily recognized who the boy was instantly. He looked so much like his father... but she'd thought both boys lived with their mothers.

Maybe his mother was here, too. Lily got out of the car slowly.

Rule kissed his son on the cheek, leaving his hand on the boy's shoulder when he straightened. He was tall for his age— if she hadn't known better she would have guessed him to be thirteen or fourteen instead of eleven. His eyes were darker than Rule's and shining with curiosity.

"Paul," Rule said, "I would like you to meet Lily Yu."

"Oh! Is she the one you—"

"Your mother would be unhappy with your manners," Rule interrupted gently.

"Sorry, Ms. Yu." He smiled, and some of the resemblance to Rule slipped, letting the person he was becoming shine through. "I'm happy to meet you."

"I'm glad to meet you, too, Paul." Though apparently he knew more about her than she did him. Rule had scarcely mentioned his sons.

Rule kept his hand on Paul's shoulder. The boy chattered happily all the way to the house. "Grandfather's much better today. He was sitting up in bed when I went to see him. He called me a nosy pup and told me to go chase rabbits. I said that wasn't much fun when I couldn't catch them, not being four-footed yet, and he chuckled. You know that chuckle of his." He glanced around his father at Lily. "You'll see what I mean. It sounds like when you turn the bass way up on the stereo. So I figured he was feeling better, if he was chuckling instead of cussing."

"I suspect you figured right," Rule said.

The entry hall was large, tiled, and ended in sliding doors, left open, that led to an atrium. Doorways opened off both

sides of the entry. The woman who stepped out of a doorway on the right was fifty or sixty with gray hair hanging in frizzy clouds to her waist. She wore running shorts and an athletic bra. Her skin was coppery, probably from heritage as well as sun, and her muscle tone was excellent. She heaved a short, put-upon sigh. "Paul said that was your car. He knows the sound of the engine, I suppose. Go on in, Rule. Your father's expecting you."

"Giving you a hard time, is he, Nettie?" Rule asked sympathetically.

"He wants steak!" Her hands flew up in exasperation. "What he thinks he's going to do with it, I don't know. He doesn't have enough duodenum left to wrap around my thumb. I would have preferred to keep him in sleep another day, but you know him."